Monday, June 12, 2017

What you do and why you do it

I teach children, and I suspect my motives differ a bit from
those who ostensibly dictate the curriculum.In the end, I want my lambs to be happy.Not rich, not "successful," not professionals, not
leaders, though any of those may well be a by-product of what I do.Happiness matters if you're mortal.

"The Savages of [Canada], in the time that the sap rises, in the Maple, make an incision in the Tree, by which it runs out; and after they have evaporated eight pounds of the liquor, there remains one pound as sweet ...."

from British Royal Society paper, 1685,"The Maple Syrup Story History of Maple Syrup"

It takes a sugar maple growing in the northeastern United States nearly 40 years to reach a diameter of 12 inches, wide enough to tap for maple sap, more than half a lifetime for most of us. A tree this size will yield about 10 gallons of sap in a season, which gets boiled down to a quart of maple syrup.

A quart of fancy grade maple syrup at retail prices will get you about $15-20 dollars. To get this quart of syrup, 10 gallons of sap needs to be boiled down, either using wood or petroleum for fuel. Making maple syrup will put a little cash in your pockets.

The same tree will yield about $50 worth of wood if sold to a timber company. The retail value is much higher, of course, but without lifting a finger beyond signing a contract, the landowner can exchange his tree for a stump, and pocket 300% more money than he would make in a season making maple syrup, were he so inclined to do the labor.

If you take an accountant's view, with labor a minimum of $5.15/hour, well, you end up losing "value" or money or whatever it is we think is more tangible than currency. It's thinking like that that got us the 98% corn syrup version of syrup. If Indians were better accountants, we would not know what real maple syrup tasted like.

Fortunately for us, the Indians needed calories more than cash. Maple syrup and maple sugar provided calories in a time of the year when other sources were scarce.

When the Indians gathered in northern forests to collect maple sap, it was cold. The full February Hunger Moon marked the trails at night as families gathered at the sugaring grounds. While it is easy to romanticize maple sugaring, late winter evenings in Vermon] are cold. Animals and people starve.

One Indian myth parallels the fable of Eden. Maple trees once ran full of syrup, but a god filled trees with rainwater to make the Indians work for their bounty. I do not know what offense caused the god to dilute the sap. Our God punished us for seeking knowledge we ought not seek--something we seem to have forgotten.

Imagine shivering on an icy March night, under the waning moonlight. Your children whimper. The trees look inert, dead. The stars are visible through the leafless branches.

The trees are gashed, and the next day the sap flows and flows and flows. Fires are started. Rocks heated in the fires are dropped in the wooden vats holding the sap, to drive the water off as steam.

You are a hungry child. Your first taste of spring is maple syrup. You are alive.

Indians shared their knowledge with the pale folk. In our warm homes with our exuberant bellies splashing maple syrup on pancakes year round, we forget that calories mean life.

The process of maple sugaring remains essentially the same, which means it remains inefficient. It will never be profitable to those who insist on selling pure maple syrup. General Foods figured this out a long time ago. Look at the ingredients on Aunt Jemima Syrup. Look again. How much maple syrup is in it?

Sugaring is the act of gently gathering what the maple tree has to offer, and then feeding your senses with it through every step of the process; and knowing that you will be able to do it again next year and the next, without harming a thing.

Ms. Norton will never make it as the CEO of a publicly owned company. She probably would not last long in a cubicle. She might even get a bit cold in February, trying to coax heat from maple logs in her wood stove.

The Krueger-Norton family taps about a thousand maple trees each spring. Trish's daughters spent hours and hours in cribs in the sugar house, the maple steam humidifying the air. The family burns 6 tons of wood a day during peak sugaring season. It doesn't make much economic sense, but I bet her kids are healthier for it.

If you really like the maply in maple syrup, look for Grade B. Maple sap was traditionally used for sugar. The less color and flavor in the final product, the higher the grade--the point was the sugar, not the mapleness. The grading system persists today.